Nearly 14 million Americans live in extremely poor neighborhoods, more than twice as many as in 2000.

The economic downturn in the early 2000s, which was
followed by slow job growth and then the Great Recession, sent the
poverty rate soaring. The growing concentration of poverty is closely
linked to the availability of affordable housing, the report from
Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program found.

In 2000, there were just over 2,000 Census tracts with concentrated rates of poverty
-- where 40% or more of residents are poor. in the period between 2010
and 2014, that number had grown to nearly 4,200. Brookings compared data
from the 2000 decennial Census and from the American Community Survey
that looked at 2010 through 2014.

Poverty often becomes
concentrated in neighborhoods with blocks of public or subsidized
housing. Also, it can happen when middle income families move away,
leaving the poor behind, said study co-author Elizabeth Kneebone, a
Brookings fellow. Or, working class neighborhoods can slide into
concentrated poverty if the local economy goes south and residents lose
their jobs.

A growing body of research shows that one's chances
of getting ahead in America depends on where one grew up. For instance,
young children who moved to better neighborhoods had higher incomes as
young adults. This is particularly true for boys, Harvard researchers
Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren found.

Suburban neighborhoods fell into deep poverty at more than double the
rate of cities, according to Brookings. Almost three times as many
people lived in concentrated suburban poverty in 2010-14 than in 2000.
Also, a growing number of suburban neighborhoods are on the cusp of
extreme poverty.

Lower income Americans have been flocking to the suburbs
in recent years, following the jobs in construction, retail and
restaurants that relocated there. But the suburbs lack the
transportation, social services and affordable housing to help lift poor
residents up the income ladder, Kneebone said. And those who lose their
jobs become stuck in poverty there.

Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to live in concentrated poverty than whites, the study found.

Whites make up 44% of the nation's poor, but account for just 18% of
the poor people living in concentrated poverty. Poor blacks are almost
five times as likely to live in extremely poor neighborhoods as whites,
and poor Hispanics are more than three times as likely.by Tami Luhby@Luhby

Low-income Americans are experiencing a staggering price hike in housing costs — a change that makes it sometimes impossible to afford basic necessities.

A new Pew Charitable Trusts analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in 2013, low-income Americans spent a median of $6,897 on housing. In 2014, that rose to $9,178 — the biggest jump in housing spending for the 19-year period of data that Pew studied.

The cost of other necessities, like transportation and food, also rose, albeit not as dramatically. 2014 was the first year that Pew studied in which median spending on these three categories was higher than the median income for those in the lower third of income groups.

Lower income groups earn less income, while the costs of basic living are rising. Rent is making up nearly half of their expenditures. Download the data here.

"We show in these figures that over time, [lower-income groups] consistently spend more on transportation and considerably more on housing," Erin Currier, the project director at Pew Charitable Trusts, said. "Lower-income renters are spending nearly half their income on rent, while upper-income groups spend about 15 percent on rent. The disparity really shows that lower income families don’t have much slack in their budgets for mobility-enhancing investments like savings and wealth building."

Middle- and upper-income families also tightened budgets

The Bureau of Labor Statistics administers a quarterly interview survey to American households that collects data on monthly income and expenditures across a number of different categories. Pew's compilation of the past 19 years of data is especially striking when you look at how today's low-income Americans spend a significant percentage of their incomes on basic necessities.

The rise in housing costs was particularly drastic for low-income Americans. For middle and high earners, the increase was noticeable but smaller, about 6 to 9 percent in 2014. Their budgets also had a lot more slack; basic necessities didn't even come close to consuming nearly half their income.

Median incomes decreased across the board, though there was still room in their household budgets to return expenses to pre-recession levels. The average upper-income household spent nearly three times as much a month on entertainment spending as its lower-income counterpart.

Rents are rising as housing stock becomes scarce

What accounts for the dramatic increase in rent for low-income Americans? As my colleague Matt Yglesias wrote last week, housing inventory across the country is at a historic low, and exclusionary zoning laws in many cities and suburban areas prevent construction of multifamily units in favor of single-family homes:

The good news ought to be that a low level of housing supply leads to a boom in house building, which puts people to work and eventually ameliorates the shortage.

But it's not happening. Instead, construction of new homes remains at an abnormally low level.

Construction of McMansions has rebounded strongly, but overall construction remains in a fairly profound funk even as the population today is much larger than it was back in the 1970s.

So what's going on? The basic story seems to be that after years of financial crisis and recession, a large share of Americans are simply too burdened by low wages, past foreclosure, depleted savings, and overhangs of other debts (student loans, medical bills, etc.) to buy starter homes. And while investors were willing to pick up vacant or bank-owned single-family homes for pennies on the dollar during the peak slump years to operate them as rentals, nobody is excited enough about the business of operating single-family rental homes to actually go out and build vast new tracts of modest-size single-family homes destined for the rental market.

Pit bulls are pretty much Public Enemy No. 1 of American dogs. They’ve got a reputation for being dangerous, though whether that’s due to nature or nurture is the subject of much debate. In any case, pit owners who want to live in San Francisco have to sterilize their dogs. If they fancy moving with their dogs to Miami or Denver, well, they’d best forget it: Laws ban pit bulls from setting foot — er, paw — in either city.

That scorn persists even though many dogs labeled pit bulls — which isn’t a breed, but a category that includes American pit bull terriers and Staffordshire terriers — aren’t genetically pit bull-types at all. In fact, according to a new study, in animal shelters it persists in part because of that labeling.

Shelters typically identify dogs’ breeds based on information from owners or appearance. Some research indicates dogs labeled American pit bull terriers are the most prevalent breed at U.S. shelters, though one study found that half of those deemed pit bulls don’t have any pit bull-type DNA. Many end up among the 1.2 million shelter dogs euthanized each year.

Researchers at Arizona State University wanted to know how the negative pit bull label influenced dogs’ chances at adoption. The answer, in short: a lot. They found that pit bulls languish far longer at shelters, and potential adopters view them as much less attractive. The authors of the study, published in PLOS One, concluded that removing breed labels would be best for the so-called pit bulls seeking families, and for all shelter dogs.

“We were surprised how very similar-looking dogs sometimes get labeled ‘pit bull’ and other times as something completely different,” Lisa Gunter, the lead author, said in a statement. “These dogs may look and act the same, but the pit bull label damns them to a much longer wait to adoption.”

Here are the takeaways from the study:

1. Dogs labeled “pit bull” spend more than three times longer in a shelter than similar-looking dogs not deemed pit bulls

Gunter and her colleagues looked at the records of 30 dogs that had been adopted over more than two years from an Arizona shelter. Fifteen had been labeled pit bulls; 15 were “lookalikes” — dogs with similar coats, head shapes, stature and length — that were labeled another breed.

(Arizona Animal Welfare League)

Those in the first group lingered in shelter cages for 42 days, compared with about 13 days for the second group. What’s more, potential adopters at the shelter who were shown unlabeled photos of the 30 dogs found them all equally attractive. That was further indication that the breed designation had probably made a big difference in the “pit bulls'” shelter stay.

2. People view pit bull-type dogs as less attractive than other breeds

The researchers showed photos of a Labrador retriever, border collie and a pit bull to 49 California college students and to 179 posters on Reddit and asked them to what degree the dogs looked approachable, smart, friendly, aggressive, difficult to train or adoptable. The pit bull-types ranked lowest in all categories except for two: Participants deemed them most aggressive-looking and difficult to train.

In a separate study, Gunter’s team showed 15-second videos of shelter pit bulls and “lookalikes” to 51 potential adopters at the Arizona shelter. When the dogs in the videos were labeled, viewers ranked the lookalikes as more attractive. When the labels were removed, they ranked the pit bulls as more attractive.

3. The company a pit bull keeps influences how it’s perceived

The same college students and Reddit members were shown photos of each of the same three dogs next to a human — an elderly woman, a middle-aged woman in a wheelchair, a boy, a middle-aged athletic-looking man and a “rough”-looking man with tattoos. Survey respondents judged pit bulls to be friendlier and more adoptable when they were next to the boy or the elderly woman. These results are the first, the study’s authors said, to show what’s called “trait contagion” from a handler to a dog. (Previous research showed it going the other way.)

4. Pit bull-types at shelters are more likely to be adopted if they’re given no breed label — and so are all dogs

To see how an Orlando shelter’s decision to do away with breed labels influenced adoption rates, the researchers analyzed more than 17,000 adoption records from before and after the change. They found that 52 percent of pit bull-types — such as American bulldogs, American pit bull terriers, Staffordshire terriers and miniature bull terriers — were adopted when their breed was listed, and 64 percent were adopted after the shelter no longer used breed labels. Those adopted spent 1.5 fewer days at the shelter, and the pit bull-types’ euthanasia rate dropped 12 percent. All other breeds also were adopted at higher rates; Mastiff adoptions went up 15 percent.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER

This site is ad-free, and was created as a free sharing tool for agencies and individuals to obtain the resources necessary to assist people that are homeless, at-risk, veterans, etc. This blog owner does not profit from this site in any manner. The content is not the property of this blog owner. All information, materials, opinions, and views belong solely to the agency or individual that created each article. This blog owner does not represent any of the creating agencies or individuals.

Blog is ad-free, and for resource purposes only. Content is not the property of the blog owner. Powered by Blogger.